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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

So the Dutch shipyard crew finishes an 8 or 9 figure yacht (that you know had to be not as easy as a regular 8 or 9 figure yacht) and they get handed a $25 iPod and a thank you note written in English?

That kind of came off as tacky. Or a fitting summary of Jobs' career.

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Or you made an incredibly stupid leap of logic and forgot to consider the fact that these guys most likely are employed by a company that compensated them for their work throughout the months or years that it took to build the ship.

Think of it like you bringing out food and drinks for construction workers fixing your roof.

If you were fixing the roof of a $100,000,000 mansion and the owner comes out at lunch time and hands you a warm can of Wal-Mart Cola, what would you think? See dagw's comment above.

If the owner came out, I'd be pretty pleased that he was taking an interest. If his estate manager came out, I'd be pleased they were being considerate.

Clearly that's not what you would think, but that just denotes that you have a fuzzy idea of how being contracted to do a job works.

I've done yard work and demolition for a few very rich people and I was always appreciative when they came down with drinks--most didn't do anything other than hide out upstairs and wait for us to leave. If someone had come down with WalMart Cola, I probably would have thought, "I can't believe this guy owns a chain of restaurants and still goes to Wal-Mart to buy soda."

Exactly, look at it this way... How many yachts did they make WITHOUT getting a thank you note?

Unless it was one of the Walton family... =)

Its a gift of gratitude. They came over and acknowledged the work of the persons who build this boat. They could have sent someone to pick it up.

How would you feel when you finish a multi-year multi-million project for a client and they would send someone over to thank you for everything and even handing out some gift. (this rarely happens in our industry)

As it does matter how much they paid for it the company made a lot of money of this, so did the worker. And you dont sell Yachts like hotdogs on the street. From your comment i would suspect they had to come and hand over 10k+$/person for doing their day job?

Except that, these employees were paid by the manufacturer of the yacht company. The Jobs' didn't have to give them anything. A thank you note was already above. The iPod was beyond.

Paradoxically giving a cheap gift often makes you appear stingier than giving no gift.

A cheap gift? These guys make yachts, not buy them.

Incidentally 86% of Dutch people speak English, from my experience that is higher in coastal / docklands areas. Also an iPod shuffle is $49. I thought it was a nice gesture.

You don't think the Jobs family gets a company discount on iPods? C'mon.

So the value of a gift, unlike the value of a product, depends on what the giver paid for it? I would expect the value of the gift to be what it would cost me to acquire it, surely?

Not necessarily. Depends on whether you would have bought it for yourself.

Or...maybe they got paid as usual and enjoyed working on an very interesting and challenging project.

It's easy to go "A cheap iPod Shuffle? Come on.", but it's not about getting the gift it's about getting the memento of the work that was done.

Plus that iPod Shuffle is probably now worth about 20 iPod Shuffles.

Speaking as a longtime Apple user, Steve Jobs fan, blah blah -- that is one butt ugly boat (it's hard to imagine Steve Jobs signing off on the chrome bit), and an iPod Shuffle as a gift does seem kind of lame. Surely an iPod Nano at least.

(Heh, maybe it would have been a nano if they'd figured out how to get rid of the chrome thing.)

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